Today my firm announced one of the first strategic venture arms for the PR industry – MWW Ventures. It’s where I believe we need to go as an industry, and quickly. It’s about a shift from a professional services industry increasingly led by technology, to leading technology development itself.

Sure, times were nice for decades where PR mainly focused on non-tech areas of expertise, such as knowing how newsrooms worked. But now we need to not only be editorial experts, but technology experts as it’s technology that plays a huge role in decided where, when and how messages appear. Just as Google’s or Facebook’s algorithms.

So why a strategic venture arm? Historically, industries that needed to be on the cutting edge of technology were ones where companies established investment arms to explore new technologies that drove product, processes and services. The objective was both to make sure they stayed on the cutting edge (and to strengthen the bottom line as these new companies matured).

Over the last decade, the public relations industry, like many media related industries, has gone from a fairly static service model, to an ever changing service and product model built on a mix of expertise and technology. Yesterday we had to understand the newsroom, page layout and direct mail. Today we need to expand our expertise to understand news algorithms, content management systems and social media platforms.

Every day, new tools, techniques and technologies are being developed that directly impact how people communicate and absorb information. This means that as an industry, we need to stay out in front of these developments to ensure we can lead our clients and establish best practices as quickly as the industry develops. The best way to do that is to be more active in developing them- from trials to mentorship to investment. That’s what MWW Ventures is all about and that’s why the industry as a whole should take note.